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Booklist Feature Article

Fall E-reference Update, 2012: Databases and E-books.

Vnuk, Rebecca (author).

We asked publishers “What’s new?,” and they responded with the following information about their new reference databases, e-books, and e-book platforms as well as significant updates and enhancements to existing products. Information is effective August 2012 through January 2013. Contact the publishers for pricing details.

NEW: Eighteenth Century Journals V. Release date: August 2012. Eighteenth Century Journals V offers a complete run of the Lady’s Magazine (1770 to 1832) as well as other relevant titles from the period.

NEW: Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration and Cultural Exchange. Release date: October 2012. One of the most popular ways of teaching world history is through the story of how global commodities transformed the world. This project focuses on 15 significant commodities whose stories are often intertwined.

UPDATE: Empire Online. Release date: fall 2012. This updated and redesigned package will contain new redigitized content, new functionality, and new design. Empire Online will be cross-searchable with Global Commodities, noted above.

NEW: LGBT Thought and Culture. Release date: fall 2012. At the outset of the twentieth century, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) life existed on the fringes of society. Yet, as the era progressed and communities developed, a social movement emerged. This collection will be a one-of-a-kind online resource that will host the key works and archival documentation of the movement.

NEW: New World Cinema: Independent Features and Shorts, 1990–Present. Release date: August 2012. This online streaming-video collection delivers full-length feature films from across the globe, including several Oscar nominees, along with acclaimed shorts.

NEW: Silent Film Online. Release date: August 2012. This collection is an assemblage of the films that represent the foundation of modern cinematic technique and film theory. Curated by Alexander Street Press’ editors, it covers silent feature films, serials, and shorts from the 1890s to the 1930s.

NEW: Sports Medicine and Exercise Science in Video. Release date: August 2012. An extensive video collection for the study of human movement, conditioning, performance, rehabilitation, and physical education, this is expected to include more than 750 hours of streaming video.

NEW: Twentieth Century Religious Thought. Release date: fall 2012. This multivolume collection gathers the seminal works and archival materials related to key worldwide religious thinkers from the early 1900s until the turn of the twenty-first century. In addition to featuring prominent theologians, it will also incorporate voices from previously marginalized groups, including key feminist scholars.

NEW: Black Studies in Video. Release date: September 2012. This seminal video collection features archival footage, powerful interviews with leading figures in the civil rights movement, and documentaries examining the black experience in the arts, politics, public and private life, and much more.

NEW: World Newsreel in Video. Release date: fall 2012. This collection of historic newsreel footage and news media will enable scholars to analyze key historical events and figures from the early twentieth century—specifically the WWII era—from a range of global perspectives.

NEW: Literati Public. Release date: September 2012. This discovery service has three components: “Technology”—a growing selection of nearly 10,000 “Topic Pages” that integrate Credo’s reference e-books with a library’s existing resources and discovery services; “Content”—nearly 500 XML-enriched general reference e-books, along with more than 500,000 images and audio and video clips that enhance learning; and “Services”—customized and complementary services such as user guidance, library promotion and marketing, and training and assessment.

NEW: Health Economic Evaluations Database. Release date: October 2012. This new database, aimed at public and undergraduate libraries, provides comparative analysis of costs and consequences about medicines and other health-care interventions from around the world for informed decision making.

UPDATE: EBSCOhost Platform. New additions include references formerly available via First Search from OCLC: Chicano Database; Index to 19th-Century American Art Periodicals; Russian Academy of Sciences Bibliographies; and History of Science, Technology and Medicine.

UPDATE: Issues and Controversies. Changes effective January 2013. Completely redesigned to highlight the high-interest and most often studied debate topics in current events and U.S. society. “Curriculum Tools” have been enhanced and updated.

UPDATE: The World Almanac for Kids Online. Changes effective October 2012. Completely redesigned, featuring new articles and teacher support.

UPDATE: World News Digest. Changes effective January 2013. New enhancements include an up-to-the-minute news feed by the Reuters News Agency, “Explore Top News by Year,” an interactive map, and content from The World Almanac.

NEW: Business Insights: Essentials. Release date: August 2012. Business Insights: Essentials replaces Gale’s long-standing Business and Company Resource Center database. New tools and features include a robust business glossary of thousands of business terms culled from Gale encyclopedias and Cengage Learning textbooks, text-to-speech functionality, translation tools for the user interface and article-level translations, citation tools, and interactive charting with the ability to manipulate statistical data and customize charts.

NEW: Gale Genealogy Connect. Release date: August 2012. Focusing on the how-to’s of genealogical research, along with unique source materials, it serves as a complement to popular fact-, date-, and people-based genealogy resources already on the market.

NEW: National Geographic Virtual Library—National Geographic: People, Animals and the World. Release date: fall 2012.This new resource features a collection of National Geographic books, images, maps, and videos as well as National Geographic Traveler magazine from 2010 to the present.

NEW: National Geographic Virtual Library—National Geographic Magazine Archive, 1995–Current. Release date: fall 2012. The complete archive of National Geographic magazine, recognized for some of the highest-quality photojournalism and cartography in the world.

NEW: Complete Television, Radio & Cable Industry Directory, 2013. Release date: November 2012. In addition to being offered as an e-book (see below), this directory’s data will also be available as a customizable, downloadable database.

UPDATE: Sharpe Online Reference. Fall 2012 additions to the Global History and Culture Collection include Global Social Issues: An Encyclopedia; World Food: An Encyclopedia of History, Culture, and Social Influence from Hunter-Gatherers to the Age of Globalization; and Native Peoples of the World: An Encyclopedia of Groups, Cultures, and Contemporary Issues. Added to the U.S. History and Culture Collection is Democratic, Republican, and Third Parties in America: An Encyclopedia.

NEW: Oxford Scholarly Editions. A collection of hundreds of poems, plays, and prose works, written by writers active between 1485 and 1660. Will ultimately include all of Oxford’s distinguished list of authoritative scholarly editions, from the Oxford Classical Texts to the Romantic poets, and from medieval Latin chronicles to the twentieth century.

UPDATE: Oxford Reference. Changes effective fall 2012 include improvements for searching and browsing, links to all other online Oxford content via the new “Oxford Index,” and new personalization features.

UPDATE: 19th Century Masterfile will undergo an interface redesign with a more informative introductory page. New content updates include the index to the Granite Monthly and Burlington Free Press as well as the inclusion of historical images via ARTstor.

UPDATE: Public Documents Masterfile has undergone significant changes, including an overhaul to its introductory page and interface, enhanced search, and faceting options. New content includes Catalogue of the Public Documents of the Fifty-Third Congress; Public Documents of the First Fourteen Congresses, 1789–1817; and the Department of Energy’s Energy Citations Database.

UPDATE: HeritageQuest Online. As a partner in a collaborative effort to index the contents of the 1940 U.S. Federal Census, ProQuest is adding the census to HeritageQuest Online. The initial release of 19 states and 2 U.S. territories begins October 2012 and continues through early 2013.

NEW: Digital Literacy. Release date: August 2012. This database, aimed at students in grades 7–12, explores cyberbullying, digital etiquette, career information and preparedness, various digital platforms, and technology movers and shakers. Features include weekly quizzes and polls, user-friendly browse and comprehensive search, correlations to Common Core State Standards, and Common Core–aligned activities that allow students to apply knowledge and create digital content.

NEW: Financial Literacy. Release date: August 2012. This database, aimed at students in grades 7–12, explores macro-, micro-, and global economics as well as personal and household finance. Features include curriculum correlations to state, national, and Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Finance standards, interactive calculators and financial tools, instant translation into more than 50 languages, text-to-speech functionality, weekly quizzes and polls, and lesson plans.

NEW: Interactive eBooks with Digital Content Creation Tools. Release date: August 2012. Innovative, robust new Interactive eBooks supports the Common Core State Standards by integrating informational reading and writing in a safe digital environment. Digital-content-creation tools guide students in creating a digital response to reading in a safe, secure environment. Students can create age-appropriate, professional-looking projects using social media such as blog posts, wiki pages, digital storyboards, web pages, and more.

NEW: Teen CyberSmarts. Release date: August 2012. Teen CyberSmarts gives teens hands-on experience in navigating the online world in a safe, controlled environment. Guided simulations use texting, e-mail, and chat to teach users to safely manage their online identities. Easy to use with a group or individually, Teen CyberSmarts can be projected on a whiteboard or viewed on individual student computers. Instructional tools include lesson plans, reproducibles, research prompts, and pretest assessments.

NEW: SAGE Knowledge. Release date: fall 2012. This new resource, aimed at high-school and undergraduate students, is a research site that includes an expansive range of more than 2,500 current e-book and e-reference titles written by journal editors and contributors, conference presenters, peer reviewers, and more.

NEW: FreedomFlix. Release date: September 2012. Designed for students in grades 4 and up, this resource transforms content from the highly successful Cornerstones of Freedom book series into enhanced e-books. Also includes related content and primary sources featuring videos, audio, images, and text.

UPDATE: Science Power. New features include pre- and post-assessments for all lessons and units, in addition to a comprehensive site assessment. A new “Student Center” and an enhanced “Teacher Center” will enable educators to assign assessments and lesson reviews, view automatically scored assessment records, review and assign scores to open-ended responses, and more.